UN calls for community backing for no violence against women

UN calls
for community backing for no violence against women and
children campaign

With the global campaign “16
days of Activism against Gender Violence” about to begin
on November 25, a UN representative says statistics from
many countries still paint a troubling picture of violence
in our societies.

Roberta Clarke, Regional Director for
the UN Women Asia and Pacific Regional Office, told the 10th
annual World Conference of the International Ombudsman
Institute in Wellington that the reported statistics of
women who have been victims of domestic violence range from
30% in New Zealand, 33% in Costa Rica, 39% in Turkey and 49%
in Bangladesh.

“It is a worldwide issue,” she says.
“And women’s organisations have been saying for a long
time that violence against women cuts across culture,
ethnicity, religion, income and status.”

Roberta Clarke
has called on communities to back the campaign which calls
for zero tolerance to violence against women.

“It is an
important aspiration to build a culture of zero tolerance.
We know we may not get to zero incidents of violence against
women and children, but what we want is to get to a culture
where we understand that there is something manifestly
terrible about the violation and recognise that individuals,
communities and the state all have a duty to prevent and
respond effectively.”

She says communities have to build
up accountability.

“Accountability begins with the
individual - you control yourself and what you tolerate in
your family and community and you say no to violence. But
the state also has a role in protecting and preventing
violence against women through laws, policies and in
modelling zero tolerance for all forms of violence against
women.

“Accountability is about ensuring that the state
organisations who have the authority to respond - police,
judiciary, social workers or health workers - do so
effectively, that they do not look away from it saying
that’s private or it is too difficult to think about or
its cultural. There is no looking away from violence
against women. Everyone has a responsibility to act in the
context of their mandate.”

Roberta Clarke says over the
last twenty years a lot of work has been done to make the
issue visible, to reform laws, develop services to respond
to the needs of victims/survivors and their families, to
build the capacity of the justice sector particularly
police, judiciary and prosecutors and to start programmes
for perpetrators. All of which can have the effect of
transforming culture towards zero tolerance.

“There is a
lot more understanding of the issue and the range of
responses required to ensure women’s rights to lives free
of violence. Over 120 countries have enacted domestic
violence legislation. Yet, the numbers appears not to be
going down.”

She says this it probably reflects both
increased reporting and increased societal violence which is
shown through the data on homicides.

“Monitoring is
difficult because data collection is deficient. Firstly,
there is under-reporting as many women do not go to the
police for a number of reasons – embarrassment, mistrust,
fear. Often, police collect information just on perpetration
and do not record the relationship between the victim and
the perpetrator and so you cannot get a sense of what is the
real incidence of domestic violence. Courts collect record
for their purposes and health sector collects record for
theirs purposes but in many countries it is difficult to put
together to come up with a true prevalence.”

Roberta
Clarke told the meeting of Ombudsman that they have an
important part to play in combating violence against women
and children.

“Ombudsmen have a significant platform.
They are authoritative, credible, respected and they are
understood and accepted to be monitors of maladministration,
unfairness or arbitrariness in all the countries where they
exist. They can provide another avenue for women to get
redress.

“We do know that violence against women is
underreported, particularly sexual offences, and we do also
have a sense that this is linked to the mistrust of police
services. The ombudsman can play a major part by working
with police units to better understand how their responses
are perceived and experienced by complainants and to make
suggestions for corrective action.”

She says the
distressing story globally is that there is a tremendous
attrition between the number of assaults on women to the
number of reports made to police, to the investigations,
charges, prosecutions and convictions.

“When you have
that attrition you are talking about impunity and most rape
going unpunished. We think ombudsmen can be one of the
forces that help us think about why this impunity exists,
why some offences matter than others and what can we do to
fix it, to ensure women’s access to
justice.”

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